o true--I could not but be true to her--and perhaps I may go
to her soon--she will be waiting--and I have lost twenty years of
Paradise."

A fierce temptation assailed Philippa, the fiercest she had ever known
or was ever likely to know--to tell him. To tell him the one thing of
which as yet he was ignorant--that Phil had not been true, that she had
not loved him, that she had been the wife of another man at the time of
her death. Surely if he knew this he would turn to her, whom he had
loved--if only in a dream--for a little while.

The words were almost past her lips when she stifled them, for the next
instant she knew she could never speak them. Out of the wreckage of
his life--of all that he held dear--only one thing was left to him, and
that was his love for Phil, his faith in her. Could she, who loved him
so, destroy the one thing he still possessed simply in the hope to gain
what she herself longed for? Could she deal him another blow, and that
the hardest, bitterest of all--undermine what had been the very
keystone of his life, the one really flawless element in the whole sad
story? Her love--the strength of which she boasted--had been sullied
by jealousy, dimmed by reservations, a paltry thing beside his; and
yet, be that as it might, she knew it was all she had to give. She had
given him her whole heart, irrevocably. Let her prove it by her
silence now.

He must live out his days, sad as they must be, without the added
burden of disillusionment; and for the rest, it was in higher Hands
than hers. She resumed her seat presently very quietly and sat
watching him.

He lay quite still, evidently thinking deeply; he was, outwardly at
least, perfectly calm and composed, but all the vitality, all the
animation which had been so marked in his expression a few short hours
before, had gone from his face, leaving it set and stern. The years
which had passed unheeded in their going took toll of him now, and set
their seal upon his features, altering them strangely.

The slow minutes passed, taking with them all the tattered remnants of
her hope; and little by little it seemed to her in her pain that unseen
hands were pushing her farther and farther from him, building a barrier
between them--a tangible thing which she had only to stretch out her
hands to feel, setting her outside his ken.

The man she loved was going from her, leaving in his place a stranger
she had never known. Francis had been so near t